Hi Everyone, I've just signed up to this forum in the hope you assist in my Avast issue. I have found various other threads relating to similar problems, but none really appeared to solve the issue 100%, and some descended into very bizarre territory, deviating sharply away from the actual issue, so apologies if the perfect fix is listed here somewhere - but in my inability to locate it I've decided to directly ask for your help.
Anyway, I have Avast 7 free, running on Win XP Home SP3. All had been working perfectly up until about 3 weeks ago - suddenly and without any prompting, my internet browsers refused to connect to any websites. The problem would stay until the next reboot when the browsers would be come active again, only to return at seemingly random times - anything between 10 mins and 4 hours of connection. There doesn't seem to be any particular pattern as to when this happens, its not when i visit specific websites or anything that I can detect as a trend.
Long story short, after much searching online I've ruled out many possible causes and tried out several fixes without success.
I can confirm it is not relating to any other 3rd part security apps or programs, there was a an installation of AVG prior to the current installation of Avast, but that was removed in its entirety using an approved removal method and no issues have occurred in the two years since removal.
I've noted that there are many reports of the Avast Web shield being directly responsible for the issue, in conjunction with the Windows XP Firewall(possibly - seen contradictary threads and posts.) I can confirm that switching of the Avast Web shield does indeed make all my browsers work again. I can confirm that while the shield is on and the browsers are not working, I can navigate to HTTPS web addresses and I can ping websites. Also, other PC's can be directly connected to my router and can search the net without issue.
I've tried the winsock / tcip repairs, both manual using a downloaded utility, and I've tried following some advice I think i might have found on a thread on here about deleting exceptions within the Windows Firewall relating to the browsers I use. None of these fixes have resolved the issue, although perhaps I might not have understood exactly what I was supposed to do in each instance, more guidance welcomed.
Finally, the last thing I attempted was to update Avast to the latest available version - I went from the free version 6 to free version 7. I did this while my connections and browsers were working, it did it without protest, and it worked after the reboot for about 3 hours, but then its fallen back into its predictable pattern.
Just for reference, Avast has not actually given me any feedback about if its blocking internet browsing for a specific security reason, I'm certainly not getting any warnings. I also ran a full scan last night using Malware Bytes, it found nothing untoward.
So, I'm stuck! Ideally I'd like to continue using Avast as its always appeared to have been sufficient for my needs, but I'm not really happy about having to browse most of the time with the web shield switched off, I get the impression that its a pretty important part of the whole security package!
Is there a definitive solution to fix this issue that you clever peeps might know of?
Many thanks
Jim (browsing without web shield!)
